The late Italian philosopher and novelist can help us understand the politics of Trump and Bernie.

derives from individual or social frustration. That is why one of the most typical features of the historical fascism was the appeal to a frustrated middle class, a class suffering from an economic crisis or feelings of political humiliation, and frightened by the pressure of lower social groups. In our time, when the old “proletarians” are becoming petty bourgeois… the fascism of tomorrow will find its audience in this new majority.

He continued:

To people who feel deprived of a clear social identity, Ur-Fascism says that their only privilege is the most common one, to be born in the same country. This is the origin of nationalism. Besides, the only ones who can provide an identity to the nation are its enemies. Thus at the root of the Ur-Fascist psychology there is the obsession with a plot, possibly an international one.

Eco, who passed away on Friday, was familiar with his subject matter. He had been born 10 years after Benito Mussolini’s March on Rome; as a boy, he won a “voluntary, compulsory” essay contest for “young Italian Fascists—that is, for every young Italian.” The essay question was “Should we die for the glory of Mussolini and the immortal destiny of Italy?” [“My answer was positive,” he wrote. “I was a smart boy.”]

Italian fascism, Eco noted, was unlike that of its Nazi neighbor to the north. The Germans had Mein Kampf, Aryanism, and so forth, an ideological framework coherent enough to ensure that even the farthest reaches of culture could be evaluated for compliance. “There was only a single Nazi architecture and a single Nazi art.” Fascism was more pliant. It was against the King, then it was for him, then it conquered Abyssinia and made him an emperor, then it opposed him again. Its student societies, wrote Eco, became training grounds for its opponents: “New ideas circulated without any real ideological control. It was not that the men of the party were tolerant of radical thinking, but few of them had the intellectual equipment to control it.” There were divergent artistic and architectural movements, some of which manifested “exactly the reverse” of fascist ideals.

The net result was “a fuzzy totalitarianism, a collage of different philosophical and political ideas, a beehive of contradictions”; Mussolini himself “did not have any philosophy: he had only rhetoric.” And, wrote Eco, what was true of Italy was true of the general phenomenon of fascism around the world: there is a common form, an “Ur-Fascism,” beneath vastly different fascist regimes. While nobody wants to bring back the fascism of old (save for a few oddballs drawn to the taboo: becoming a fascist is the Stuff White People Like version of joining ISIS), Ur-Fascism “is still around us, sometimes in plainclothes…. [It] can come back under the most innocent of disguises.” And Eco identifies 14 traits of Ur-Fascism. They’re worth reading in their entirety, as is the larger piece in which they’re embedded—Eco’s writing is witty and provocative, all the more impressive since English was but one of at least seven languages in his command. Historians of fascism would probably quibble with some of the finer points, but when the old monster is depicted in such broad strokes, we can blink and for a split second imagine we’re seeing something from the present. Eco’s Ur-Fascism has, if you will, echoes.

Take the frustrated middle class, socially humiliated, squeezed from below, with old social identities fading. Isn’t this a situation familiar today? As the editorial in the latest issue of TheAmerican Conservative, “After Neoliberalism,” opines, “That economic populism [as promoted by Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders] should find a foothold in both parties after the Great Recession and eight years of lagging prosperity under Barack Obama is not entirely surprising…. A void is opening in American politics.” And the malady isn’t just economic. Our culture has experienced rapid moral shifts that expose unsteady foundations. Old sources of authority and objects of respect—police, historical greats, etc.—are pilloried. Old social hierarchies are under attack; ordinary people and their values are mocked, especially among bien-pensant elites. And the idea that hard, honest work will yield a comfortable life—the core American idea, if we ever had one—doesn’t feel true anymore. The principle distinction within the middle class is now whether sending your children to college will leave them in severe, or merely moderate, debt peonage. And the intense competition at all levels of education reflects a growing fear that hard-earned success might not help your children enjoy the same. A world of social critique and thwarted ambition is a breeding ground for nihilism in the best and worse in the worst.

Eco also saw a “cult of action for action’s sake” in fascism. “Thinking is a form of emasculation…. culture is suspect insofar as it is identified with critical attitudes….the critical spirit makes distinctions, and to distinguish is a sign of modernism,” the root of the cultural maladies fascism sought to eradicate. In a world of social chaos and murky values, the fascist’s bold measures appear otherworldly, supernatural, as marks of superiority. The fascist acts “before, or without, any previous reflection”—meaning his confidence and clarity are illusions: he knows the right path forward because walking resolutely makes the path right. Thinking before acting, on the other hand, reflects weakness of character, makes someone “low energy”; when they act—if they act at all—it will be in useless half-measures. This sort of disposition would allow someone (say, a businessman with no political experience) to proclaim he will solve even the thorniest problems. Iran’s nuclear program? We’ll fix it in a week, and we’ll get them to pay us. Illegal immigrants? Gone. Trade deficits and decades of job loss in manufacturing? Fixed.

Of course, there are no perfect analogues for the Ur-Fascist in American politics, and there likely never will be. Americans are not a mystical people, yet Ur-Fascism is. Truth, for the Ur-Fascist, was revealed “at the dawn of human history,” but was shattered, hidden in a thousand sources, “concealed under the veil of forgotten languages—in Egyptian hieroglyphs, in the Celtic runes, in the scrolls of the little known religions of Asia.” The little fragments of the “primeval truth” must be pieced together from a thousand sources, some contradictory. Thus, for example, the fascist world’s weird fascination with archaeology, with Zoroaster, with the Vedas. This disposition is extremely weak in America: Hotep and Odinism are curios, not major intellectual currents. Eco:

If you browse in the shelves that, in American bookstores, are labeled as New Age, you can find there even Saint Augustine who, as far as I know, was not a fascist. But combining Saint Augustine and Stonehenge—that is a symptom of Ur-Fascism.

So unless Sanders announces he’s put a hex on the 1 Percenters through the power of crystals, or Trump declares his campaign to be a struggle against “Ahrimanic dark forces,” we’re probably not facing real ur-fascism. Similarly, few in America “crave a heroic death,” and the “cult of action” is weak. Fascists do not have 401(k)s; fascists are not entrepreneurs. But Eco’s list has value even for analyzing utterly nonfascist political trends. Consider the Ur-Fascist’s representation of the enemy:

The followers must feel humiliated by the ostentatious wealth and force of their enemies…. However, the followers must be convinced that they can overwhelm the enemies. Thus, by a continuous shifting of rhetorical focus, the enemies are at the same time too strong and too weak. Fascist governments are condemned to lose wars because they are constitutionally incapable of objectively evaluating the force of the enemy.

There is nothing that makes this error innately fascist; indeed, having lost a few wars lately, we might do well to watch out for proclamations that our nation’s foes put us in existential danger, yet can be easily crushed.

Eco’s notion of “selective populism” is also worth examining:

In a democracy, the citizens have individual rights, but the citizens in their entirety have a political impact only from a quantitative point of view—one follows the decisions of the majority. For Ur-Fascism, however, individuals as individuals have no rights, and the People is conceived as a quality, a monolithic entity expressing the Common Will. Since no large quantity of human beings can have a common will, the Leader pretends to be their interpreter. Having lost their power of delegation, citizens do not act; they are only called on to play the role of the People. Thus the People is only a theatrical fiction.

Our leaders nowadays are more likely to be heckled by the crowd than heiled by it; the radical democracy of social media means political movements have a greater danger of dissolving into a dozen tiny, fanatic sects, not falling behind a new Duce. Yet Eco thought technology could revive the Common Will, that “there is in our future a TV or Internet populism, in which the emotional response of a selected group of citizens can be presented and accepted as the Voice of the People.” Isn’t this the point of Twitchy on the right or about half of the “X said Y and got SHUT DOWN on Twitter” pieces on the left? Mass-scale social media enables us to find a thousand backers for even our oddest opinions; its algorithms, given time, push us to see only those with whom we agree. Ideological monocultures are the new default; finding opposing viewpoints requires constant effort. That is where Eco was wrong: writing before the Internet was social and algorithmically optimized, he could not see that the new Leader, the new interpreter of the Common Will, is the self. The crowd is back, and it is everywhere. Wherever we turn, whatever our choices, personal or political, right or wrong, the crowd will be there with us, chanting our name, shouting: Onward!

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36 Responses to Umberto Eco’s Lessons on Ur-Fascism

I think it’s possible to overanalyze our political and economic angst; like a PhD candidate trying to come up with a novel interpretation of something that is more primal if unoriginal, it obscures rather than illuminates.

Mussolini was highly intelligent, a kind of Renaissance Man, but as a master of banality. Much of the fascist sculpture, aimed at resurrecting the classic, is particularly so.

The practical ideology expressed in the relationship of the individual to the state and to big business, whether industrial or financial, was fascistic by definition – the interests of business and government merged and become an unbreakable authoritarian combine. That this becomes the whole which the individual is sacrificed to guarantees its banality and therefore a certain unsustainable incoherence.

But American populism, especially in the present time, isn’t looking to support ‘the strong man’ and sacrifice the citizenry to his elevation and putative messiahhood. If Trump were to be the vehicle for that, it would be laughable, he is so ill-suited. What is occurring is that he has the wealth to enter the political arena that the establishment has set as a requirement, usually by pledging subservience to the donorist class, but not only without such allegiance, but acting as its challenger and identifying with the interests of the majority of millions of Americans.

We already have our fascism, the de facto oligarchy of donorists that determines political policy, in its own interest. The governmental power has been captured by these interests, and the politicians pledge fealty to them, while mouthing their own banalities in lip service to democracy, which as soon as elected they overthrow.

If Marx and Engels claimed to stand Kant and Hegel on their heads, surely our own crony capitalists have inverted American free enterprise on its. Instead of serving the common good and welfare of all, they seek only to enrich themselves engaging in commerce as if it is a zero sum game the millions of their own countrymen must lose in their favor.

Famously, big business backed both Mussolini and Hitler; here they are responding with hysteria in opposition to Donald Trump. Trump can hardly be a fascist, when those oligarchs who most benefit from exercising a disguised form of it are his enemies.

Great that we are finally calling a spade a spade and not a big spoon. Trumpism is the closest America has gotten to Fascism; important for all citizens to take a long hard look and decide if that is what they truly want.

Paul Gottfried has just published a book on fascism. Revolutionary nationalism + corporatism + authoritarian leader + Catholicism = Fascism.

Of course, Mussolini’s “corporatism” should be taken with a grain of salt, it didn’t change things very much. I think FDR did more to transform the US economy than Mussolini ever did, in comparison.

Moreover, the fascists were anti-Clerical until 1929.

While allied with Austria against Germany in the early 30’s, they were highly critical of Nazi Anti-Semitism (and the Fascist Party had many Jews and good relations with Jews from 1922 on), only to change course when Mussolini allied with Hitler.

So perhaps the essence of fascism is Machiavellian authoritarianism? Except this would make them indistinguishable from the “Anti-Fascist” Left.

I think it is important to understand how “fascism” has been used by the Left. Basically it signifies anything Leftists don’t like, similar to “racism”.

Fascism is dead, and as Oswald Mosley learned, it doesn’t have much appeal to the Anglo-Saxon Vikings, who are much too Protestant, and much too individualistic.

The idea that Americans would find any appeal in sacrificing themselves and their families for the good of the Nation can go nowhere. Americans only want a Nation so they have someone to give them hand-outs. You notice Trump talks about “making America great again” but little about sacrifice for the good of the Fatherland. Trump is mostly about fat guys who like to shoot guns, not warriors seeking glory.

It is time to acknowledge that “fascism” is a dead ideology, and perhaps we can talk about a “strong executive” or even “authoritarian” features in Trumpism, for grown ups to call Trump “fascist” is similar to grown ups calling W. a “Nazi”.

Vox has a nice article where they spoke with 4 experts on fascism, and all agreed Trump is not fascist.

The reality is the Left has abandoned workers, and workers are being organized under the ambit of the “far right” and the Left wants to smear anything that resembles a real labor movement because of their bourgeois elitism. Conservatives are just worried they have become irrelevant to the Right.

In John Allen Gay’s “Umberto Eco’s Lessons on Ur-Fascism–The late Italian philosopher and novelist can help us understand the politics of Trump and Bernie” Gay seems to be setting us up for the thesis that “the politics of Trump and Bernie” are “Ur-Fascist.”

However, Gay assures us that “unless Sanders announces he’s put a hex on the 1 Percenters through the power of crystals, or Trump declares his campaign to be a struggle against ‘Ahrimanic dark forces,’ we’re probably not facing real ur-fascism.”

Gay further assures us that “…Few in America ‘crave a heroic death,’ and the ‘cult of action is weak. Fascists do not have 401(k)s; fascists are not entrepreneurs.”

OK, so why does Gay entitle his essay “Umberto Eco’s Lessons on Ur-Fascism”? And why does Gay say that Eco “can help us to understand the politics of Trump and Bernie”?

Gay’s answer (Are you ready?): “…Eco’s list has value even for analyzing utterly non-fascist political trends.”

Well, I wish-to-hell Gay hadn’t waited 1200 words into a 1600 word article to assure us that, no, he wasn’t really going to try to pin the “fascist” label on Trump and Sanders — but that the Eco list could help us to analyze “utterly non-fascist political trends.”

To repeat: “Utterly non-fascist political trends.”

Eco was like that, too, wasn’t he – I mean Eco’s novels were like Gay’s essay: They were suspenseful and kept you on the edge of seat right until the end.

Yesterday Samuel Goldman posted “Are Trump Supporters Authoritarians? — Electoral support is better explained by political reasoning than pseudo-Freudian psychological projections” in which Goldman examined some of the Frankfurt School/Theodor Adorno views on “authoritarianism.”

The following is Goldman’s rejection of the Adorno “authoritarianism” thesis as applied to Donald Trump and his supporters:

“…Studies of authoritarianism almost always single out conservative and populist views for psychological explanation. In this case, the implication is that approval for Trump rests on an odd and disturbing mental profile–but not support for other politicians or positions. But couldn’t progressive views rest on a distinctive and potentially dangerous perspective, perhaps involving inadequate appreciation for discipline and indifference to risk?…These observations…give ample reason to doubt that authoritarianism is very useful as an explanatory concept. Like many others, I think it’s more helpful to understand Trump as the latest expression of an old and influential ‘Jacksonian’ tendency in American life. Sometimes politics really is about politics, rather than a proxy for other factors.”

This is so well put: “Sometimes politics really is about politics, rather than a proxy for other factors.”

Any group that has any intentions on making structural changes to economy or society is going to lean toward a strong executive and will be antagonistic to the Congress (controlled by special interests) and Supreme Court (which will always be peopled by the Old Guard seeking to torpedo real change).

Fair trade and an immigration policy that served the national interest does amount to a structural change to the economy, and taking political correctness down a notch will require some tweaks in the cultural establishment.

If you like the status quo, you want to continue and accelerate the economic and cultural trends of this Country, push for a weak executive and judicial supremacy.

If you don’t like a status quo, and you think we are headed in the wrong direction, you want a strong executive who can battle the special interests, and a Supreme Court that isn’t playing goalie for the Oligarchs.

As Fran notes, the way to recognize a real fascist is whether they represent themselves as “progressive” yet align themselves with the economic and cultural agenda of the Oligarchs.

Rosita,
Don’t be fooled by a false analogy. Read Fran’s response, it’s spot on. Trump supporters want to break the stranglehold that government and the donor class have on our ruling elite. Ur-facism? We want “ur-voice” in the direction the country is heading. We know if we don’t change it, the outcome won’t be pleasant for our children or grandchildren. Trump is not a fix, but he’s a start.

“But American populism, especially in the present time, isn’t looking to support ‘the strong man’ and sacrifice the citizenry to his elevation and putative messiahhood. If Trump were to be the vehicle for that, it would be laughable, he is so ill-suited. What is occurring is that he has the wealth to enter the political arena that the establishment has set as a requirement, usually by pledging subservience to the donorist class, but not only without such allegiance, but acting as its challenger and identifying with the interests of the majority of millions of Americans.”

So, don’t elect the tool of the donorist class, elect one of them directly. Because, in office, he won’t serve himself and his class, but the “majority of millions of Americans.” And we know this to be true because he says so, even though his entire life history up to last year shows just the opposite. Talk about “laughable!”

And, once again, your history is faulty. Big business only backed Mussolini and Hitler after they took power.

“It will be seen that, as used, the word ‘Fascism’ is almost entirely meaningless. In conversation, of course, it is used even more wildly than in print. I have heard it applied to farmers, shopkeepers, Social Credit, corporal punishment, fox-hunting, bull-fighting, the 1922 Committee, the 1941 Committee, Kipling, Gandhi, Chiang Kai-Shek, homosexuality, Priestley’s broadcasts, Youth Hostels, astrology, women, dogs and I do not know what else… All one can do for the moment is to use the word with a certain amount of circumspection and not, as is usually done, degrade it to the level of a swearword.” – George Orwell.

But right now the working people in the United States are being screwed. Why should they not look for some way of fighting back? You suggest that they just allow themselves to be led docilely into a Bangladesh-style existence?

Of course the reaction of the masses to oppression can perhaps be as bad – or worse? – than the disease. If so, that is the fault of the elites who give the masses no better options.

Is Trump the messiah? No. But right now he is pretty much the only option for those of us who don’t want our grandchildren to live in a place like modern Haiti or the Ukraine. That someone taking on the establishment, with all its weapons and lack of shame, should have a big personality, is only necessary.

I disagree with TG’s argument for Trump. But please note that nothing in his argument is racist or xenophobic. Note also that his argument is educated (citing Orwell) and logical (faulting the elites for not giving the masses a better option).

If it comes to Trump v. Clinton, and I fear it may, a lot of smart people may well decide Trump is better. Apart from the rational appeal that TG articulates, Trump has proven himself to be by far the better politician.

“And, once again, your history is faulty. Big business only backed Mussolini and Hitler after they took power.”

I think the history is incompletely stated, not intrinsically faulty. So let’s have more context.

They realized that an alliance consummating fascism would be useful to their cause, and it was a mouth watering to be able to be promised that socialism as well as the freedom of action of the mass of individuals would be mercilessly crushed.

Corporations aren’t, in case you didn’t notice, run according to any theories of democracy, but according to a feudal or fascist model of hierarchy. The preference for U.S. foreign policy of satrapies headed by compliant authoritarians in a hierarchy of top down domination is the predictive and actual consequence.

The truth is, the disorder accompanying the rise of these peculiar ideologies was seen as disturbing the status quo and therefore creating instability for profits as usual as the left right conflict was fought in the streets and through assassination.

But once the hard right authoritarians began to consolidate power, they became to be viewed by elites as ruling forces that could act in full concert with them as a bedrock of power and profitability for big business, a bulwark against socialism and strangling the power of ordinary individuals to act for themselves, except to obey.

But history is also replete with those who opposed the depredations of their establishments, while having been raised within them. Engels was son of an industrialist. Lenin was from the petty aristocracy. Franklin Roosevelt was a scion of the ruling class, yet he arguably saved capitalism from itself, even as agreed by elitist historian Conrad Black.

Trump’s proposed changes aren’t actually revolutionary, but along the lines of what a people such as Americans who are remarkably unradical can approve of, as merely corrective in scope, and well within the historical middle way of our history. Recall that it is Warren Buffett who remarked that there has been an unprecedented class war engaged in over the near past, conducted by his own elite class, who are winning it.

It’s unfortunate that democratic accountability has fallen into such disrepair, that only a dissident from their own ranks is capable of applying the corrective. But as the example of FDR proves, this is not unprecedented. I note too that Reagan himself was a staunch FDR supporter and Democrat, until, as he said, “I didn’t leave the party so much as it left me.”

I would say that both the duopoly parties have left us, and I have been members of both.

“So, don’t elect the tool of the donorist class, elect one of them [Trump] directly. Because, in office, he won’t serve himself and his class, but the ‘majority of millions of Americans.’ And we know this to be true because he says so, even though his entire life history up to last year shows just the opposite. Talk about ‘laughable!’”

You’re right, philadelphialawyer, that “because he says so” is all that we Trump supporters know for certain regarding Trump’s promise to serve the “majority of millions of Americans.” But what a candidate says is all that we know for certain about any of the candidates’ promises.

The reason that those of us who are Trump supporters are supporting him is because he is the only candidate who says that he wants (1) to bring back millions of lost manufacturing jobs, (2) to shut down the immigration that has deprived Americans of millions of jobs that are rightfully theirs, and (3) to keep us out of more disastrous Middle East wars that have wasted the trillions of dollars that should be used to rebuild America.

Better Trump, the candidate who says that he will do the right things for “the majority of millions of Americans”, than the other candidates who say the things favored by the donor class, the party establishments, and the special interests.

Let’s say for the sake of argument thatAmericans are just as mystical as anybody, it’s just the objects of our mystery happen to be abstract and not historical or archeological. We come from too many origins and we are too newly arrived on the world scene for that. But Manifest Destiny, is of course a concept entirely infused with mystery, as are its derivatives American Exceptionalism and the Indispensable Nation. Ronald Reagan conjured the mystical in “a city on a hill.” If you have ever stood with thousands in a major sports stadium for the national anthem, hands over heart, an enormous flag covering the field attended by a color guard and with red rockets fired at the appropriate line, you have arguably just participated in the quintessential Ur-Fascist mystery of the Americans.

Portentous bilge. Neither Trump nor Sanders is anything like a fascist. The least common denominator of all fascisms is state-supported violence against “undesirables.” That’s nowhere in Trump’s universe, much less Sanders’s. Ur-Ridiculous to suggest otherwise.

I think that Gay is a little too optimistic about the possibility or openness of the American character to Ur-fascism in this moment. The mis-attributed Sinclair Lewis quote that fascism would come to America wrapped in an American flag and carrying a cross, certainly seems apt. Certainly there are enough dark currents in the culture and enough desperation in the country that would accommodate it. Isn’t the revolt against the establishment a revolt against a fragmented regime run by secretive elites as opposed to a bold Common Will expressed by Trump on behalf of the people? Make America Great Again? Aren’t fantasies of blue-helmeted UN troops coming ashore to take our guns or a global-warming conspiracy of scientists to wreck our economy “at the root of the Ur-Fascist psychology” that “there is the obsession with a plot, possibly an international one”.? Lewis’s novel, ‘It Can’t Happen Here’ probably deserves a read.

As for business, business is business; it is doubtful that we can use them as a weather-vane for anything other than their own quarterly interests.

American fascism, wrapped in a flag maybe, carrying a cross no, we’re way beyond that now. American fascism at this point will be distinctly secular and militaristic.

The most conspicuous cross-carrier is Cruz, and he won’t get enough national traction while Trump supporters tend to be drawn from the unchurched, (if the fascist analogy can even be said to apply to either).

“The most conspicuous cross-carrier is Cruz, and he won’t get enough national traction while Trump supporters tend to be drawn from the unchurched, (if the fascist analogy can even be said to apply to either).”

Well Cruz; only Jesus could love that guy.

Republicans have been advertising themselves as the vehicle of Christian values and liberty for some time now. Trump doesn’t have to be coherent as a Christian just identify himself with it and make nominally Christian voters comfortable with him. It’s supremely cynical but I can see a few ways he could manipulate even that vote. It’s not like corporate and Wall Street Republicans haven’t been taking evangelicals for a ride every election year.

Republicans have been advertising themselves as the vehicle of Christian values and liberty for some time now. Trump doesn’t have to be coherent as a Christian just identify himself with it and make nominally Christian voters comfortable with him. It’s supremely cynical but I can see a few ways he could manipulate even that vote. It’s not like corporate and Wall Street Republicans haven’t been taking evangelicals for a ride every election year.

I look at it from a different angle, although we come to more or less the same conclusion. The culture is changing, religiously unaffiliated voters are growing faster than any churches. The young are largely unchurched. And Christians lost on abortion and marriage, it’s all over, all that is left is the freedom to practice their religion in peace, a freedom they now feel is threatened. Evangelicals as a bloc are shrinking. But Christians are not fooled, they see Trump for exactly what he is. They are not voting for him because he has some kind of a fig leaf veneer of Christianity. It’s simply that Christians have been burned and manipulated politically so much in the past that they now feel they have nothing to lose and potentially everything to gain as far as religious freedom by backing the Donald.

What a silly article in that it starts out by suggesting that Trump and Sanders represent fascist tendencies in our society and then refutes that by saying no they don’t. Huh?

Trump and Sanders supporters are not fascists – they have a legitimate desire to see a balance struck between satisfying the desire of large corporations to make profit and being able to get decent paying jobs as well as access affordable housing, health care, higher education etc. Such a desire on the part of the working and middle class is not fascism.

All this analysis of Trump and his supporters is getting absurd – this is not rocket science – it is pretty simple – people feel like they are getting ripped off and they have had enough.

I wonder if Eco would have believed there was an ur-communism at odds with ur-fascism. He speaks of the counter-revolutionary Catholic forces following the French revolution, but doesn’t pass note on the fact that the radicalism of the revolution led to a reign of terror and persecution of traditionalist forces.

In fact, reactionary politics always follows radicalism that is just as threatening to freedom. The example of the French Revolution is a good starting place. But Nazis would have never come to power in Germany if they were not reacting against anything. When the Nazis were elected into power, the second largest vote getting party in Germany were the Communists. Germany had also been facing radical anarchism and the creation of mini- Soviet republics, and the Freikorps were the only ones able to establish order.

In today’s politics, I think the same thing is also the case. the “micro-fascism” that Trump endorses has followed a kind of “micro-communism” pushed on the left for years, and which is most exhibited in SJWs.

But, just like most Germans never supported the Nazis or the Communists, I think there is a silent majority of people who are moderate. Most times, pragmatism and moderation wins out. In times of cultural chaos, the more extreme voices get louder. First the radicals, then the reactionaries.

What turns me off of Eco’s analysis is not only does he not express the equal fear of political radicals that they deserve — since they can be just as violent — but he also does a good deal to heap normal conservative ideas — which may be expressed moderately — indiscriminately into a heap of “ur-fascism.”

@WAB,

The mis-attributed Sinclair Lewis quote that fascism would come to America wrapped in an American flag and carrying a cross, certainly seems apt.

This is relative, too. I always cringe at this quote, because the point of fascism is that it appeals to ideas that are popular and part of popular identity, whatever they are. Liberals were slinging this quote at conservatives at a point where tolerance, diversity, and secularism were part of popular identity and, in the manner of Herbert Marcuse’s “repressive tolerance,” liberals supported militarism, and conservatives were the counter-culture.

This is what Jonah Goldberg was getting at in his book “Liberal Fascism”, although I part with his views in several ways. But radicalism easily transforms into reactionary politics, as communism became a form of fascism in the Soviet republics.

At this point, even though I’m wary of Trumpism, I still fear more from the left, because they control most of the levers of institutional power.

Thank you for a very even handed treatment of this volatile subject – though IMHO Eco’s descriptions fit Trump MUCH better than they fit Bernie.

I am particularly thankful that you didn’t waste space talking about Joshua Goldberg’s absurd LIBERAL FASCISM. Fascism – which may be seen as, among other things, the urge to enforce unity by obliterating dissent – can be tempting for any human, anywhere along the political, economic, or religious spectrum.

Eco’s article came out long before the Bush Regime, when other authors also started to smell fascism’s stench in the air (Laurence Britt & Naomi Wolf, among others). But for all the discussion of symptoms,few if any commentators talked about how to prevent its development.

The prevention of fascism, and the reinforcement of democracy, requires the ongoing and proactive promotion of democratic values and ideals – including decentralization, transparency, accountability, diversity, inclusiveness, participation, and empowerment.

The mention of Eco, an Italian writer, brought to mind a likely precedent for current conditions in the U.S.: Italy during the mid-1990s. Against a backdrop of anti-corruption investigations so extensive that at one point a majority of members of the Italian parliment were under indictment, the Communist Party and the secessionist Lega Nord were suddenly getting a lot more votes than they ever had before, not because large numbers of Italian voters had suddenly changed their values, but because the Communists and the secessionists were the only politicians in the race who were not believed to be utterly corrupt. Similarly, the major appeal of Sanders and Trump is not anything either one stands for; it’s the perception that their hands are clean.

The 1990s ended with the four biggest parties in Italy vanishing below the political horizon. The political face of Italy was wiped away and re-drawn. That could be what we’re in for, as well.

Cary,
Let me re-state this last paragraph of Skip Mendler’s post that I agree with 100%:

“The prevention of fascism, and the reinforcement of democracy, requires the ongoing and proactive promotion of democratic values and ideals – including decentralization, transparency, accountability, diversity, inclusiveness, participation, and empowerment.”

Why do you think so many Americans recoil at Donald Trump and what he represents? 6 in 10 Americans view him unfavorably. If Donald Trump’s populist revolution was grounded on decentralization, transparency, accountability, diversity, inclusiveness, participation and empowerment he would be getting 70% of the Republican vote, 55% and over in the national head to head polls against Hillary and solidifying consensus amongst the Republican party and conservatives. In other words he would have broad and strong and durable support across the entire country. The reality is far different because the truth of the matter is Trump’s message is very much exclusionary, vitriolic and stigmatizing.

“If Donald Trump’s populist revolution was grounded on…[among other factors] DIVERSITY [and] INCLUSIVENESS…he would be getting 70% of the Republican vote, 55% and over in the national head to head polls against Hillary…In other words he would have broad and strong and durable support across the entire country. The reality is far different because the truth of the matter is Trump’s message is very much EXCLUSIONARY…” (my bolding)

In today’s New York Times analyst Nate Cohn makes a comment that seems to contradict the lack-of-diversity, lack-of-inclusiveness, and exclusionary charges against Trump. Cohn says:

“Mr. Trump has tended to fare best with less educated and less religious voters. There’s also evidence he does better in places with a larger non-white population.”

“They are not voting for him because he has some kind of a fig leaf veneer of Christianity. It’s simply that Christians have been burned and manipulated politically so much in the past that they now feel they have nothing to lose and potentially everything to gain as far as religious freedom by backing the Donald.”

I can see that but I find it odd. This is perhaps off-topic but in the same vein, Tom Nichols just penned an essay in The Federalist, “I’ll Take Hillary Clinton Over Donald Trump” arguing that the while Hillary might be disastrous for the country Trump would be disastrous for Conservatism. Related, at least to me, to that was a Pew Poll of cultural differences between Americans and Europeans that cited a statistic on the question “What do you consider yourself: Nationality vs Christian?” The US response was evenly split between national identity and religious identity – national identity prevailing in European responses.

What’s curious to me is that Nichols chose Hillary over Trump in order to to defend Conservatism as the rationale for his defection rather than a choice in the best interests of the country. And your response indicates that a Christian migration to Trumpism would be in the interest of a perceived defense of Christian liberty rather than the best interests of the country. In their defense I am sure they would circle back to identify their project as “in the best interest of the country” but that seems rather weak.

The question is, “Who’s “shoring up the imperium”? The question is whether many Americans are prepared to set aside whatever project they are engaged in for the sake of preserving the Republic? Will Obergefell protesters bake that cake for the sake of national comity? Will Conservatives consider modifying their defense of laissez faire Capitalism in the interests of a stable, inclusive democracy? Will the Left give up the silly notion of “creating systems so perfect that no one will have to be good” in order to preserve some space for human freedom? What idea or project would we or our elites provisionally set aside for the sake of the Republic? Or, alternatively, what set of ideas can we all accommodate to get past this moment? It is perhaps the great appeal of Trump that he displays a willingness to ruthlessly jettison orthodoxies in order to “Make “America Great Again”; Sanders is in the same vein with his “political revolution”. Comparatively, Clinton, Rubio and Cruz are simply unsatisfactory caretakers in a nation that seems to be falling apart.

An interesting catch phrase or words so coded its meaning is lost on most? When was or wasn’t America great? Doesn’t that depends on who is making the call. How did an outsider, a person who goes against every policy republicans promote become their candidate of choice. How? The answer is simple, the Republicans created Donald Trump.

You ask how? Why is the complex part. It started long ago, but we can date its real growth with Ronald Reagan, government isn’t the solution it is the problem. Add ingredients galore: victimisation, xenophobia, nationalism, misogyny, lost freedoms, demography, corporatism, and the old favorite, racism and the brew is prepared. Something for everyone, add terrorism and immigrants as an update. Don’t want to miss anyone. Watch the crowd at a Trump rally, listen to their cheers and their questions. If you want to understand, know a person’s hatreds, it is there you’ll find the hows.

But why you ask, why make the grand old party the crazy place. Crazy is un-American right? It was an accident, but one easy to understand. Recall all the cliches on foes, on enemies, blame, question their Americanism, question their identity, point fingers at them, it’s them who took our jobs, it’s them who took our greatness. They don’t understand, they only want, they look to government, they don’t belong. ‘They’ can be anyone from the welfare recipient to the corporate donors*. Do all this and some will believe and some will seek a savior. The narrative was set, along came the answer.

* This sentiment is strong among democrats too as Wall Street bashing shows.

It seems no one reads our home-grown political theorist, Eric Hoffer, anymore. There’s little or nothing mysterious at all about the Sanders or the Trump thing(s), or the past fifty years in the Republican Party and the Religious Right, to anyone who has closely read The True Believer.

The present moment in American culture and politics has arisen from (a) the destruction of working class and lower middle class jobs by technology and outsourcing, and (b) almost two generations having passed since 1968. Across which time span the Grim Reaper has reduced the number of adult Americans who hold the pre-1968 American social contract and culture (which were very favorable to the white lower middle class and white working class) to be authoritative to a very slim majority. Or maybe plurality. In any case, already or soon a minority.

Dirty ur-fascist!!! Might have some appeal to Ivy League innerlectuals and similar fellow-traveling eggheads uniting their yolks. Might have some use as well as a final primal scream coming from the NY Times Editorial Board after the Donald thumps their gal Hillary in the General. Ur-fascist. The safe spaces on the upper west side should get some ur satisfaction tossing that expression back and forth.